I spent a couple hours this afternoon watching a portion of Philip Glass’s, Robert Wilson’s, and Lucinda Child’s Einstein on the Beach. As a director whose main weakness is tableaux, …
Man, I am in a real slump as far as reading and writing are concerned. I did, however, finish a very enjoyable novel by Kristin Gleeson called “In Praise of the Bees,” which is set in 6th-century (I think) Europe. I really enjoyed it.
“Cult of the body is an infallible symptom of a leaning toward youth, for only the young body is lithe and beautiful. Whereas cult of the mind betrays the resolve to accept old age, for the mind …
Here’s a short film called “How an Abandoned Shoe Shop Became a Sanctuary for Culture and Connection”." It’s about Dougald Hine and his wife, Anna Björkman, who have …
Just a quick note to let you know that you can buy my e-book Building a Sustainable Theater: How to Remove Gatekeepers and Take Control of Your Artistic Career for $2.49 during the month of July …
Yancey Strickler describes the process of getting the Artist Corporation through the Colorado legislature, and gives more information concerning why the A-Corp is important to artists. I hope you’ll read it.
I just removed an old workbench in the garage that clearly was built to survive a nuclear war. insert Chewbacca celebration here
“I think there may be times when it is necessary to withdraw from today’s politics, in order to do the thinking that could make it possible for there to be a politics the day after tomorrow.” – Dougald Hine
Now that I have had my Theater Ideas Substack restored to my possession (after I had stopped writing on it), I’ll probably end up on Substack a bit more (although I want to avoid getting sucked into that vortex). After having been an active member of the Theatre Blogging Wars of the Aughts, I’ve decided that I need to have some Personal Rules of Engagement as I ease back into the feed. Here they are:
There are only 5 ways to respond:
Responses #1 (Yes) and #5 (No) should be rare, because they add little to the conversation. The exception is if someone is a newby and could use the support of a “Yes” as encouragement. If the response is going to be “No,” just move along.
Response #4 (Maybe) should also be rare – if I am not certain, I should just bookmark the post or note and return once I have something worth adding. If that day never comes, oh well…
Response #3 (Yes, but…) should wait until there are a few positive responses from other people. “Yes, but…” tends to make it about me instead of the author of the post. Let the post be about the author at least for a while, then add my “but” in a way that doesn’t make the author look stupid.
Response #4 (Yes, and…) should be my most common response. I need to signal my “Yes” with enthusiasm, preferably with at least one reason, and then build on what has been written.
If I can follow these rules of engagement, maybe I’ll find the internet more interesting and enjoyable.
When I look back, there were two major occurrences that influenced my life with computers. First, in the mid-80s, I was hired to work at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), where my boss was Don Rawitsch, the inventor of the popular educational program “Oregon Trail.” I was using an Apple 2e every day, and I was surrounded by programmers using computers in education. In 1992, I was hired as Asst to the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University. The Dean was Alvin Goldfarb, and he had hired an Associate Dean, Dave Williams, whose area was (you guessed it) using computers in the Fine Arts, and he had developed a cutting edge computers lab. Those two experiences not only gave me experience with computers, but also made me much more interested in using computers in education. Once I was hired at UNC Asheville, I became very much involved in the computer work in the Center for Teaching and Learning, and I did a lot of experimentation with computers in my classroom. It seemed natural and fun. Thank you Don, Alvin, and Dave!